


Time for Different Stories

by NorroenDyrd



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bethany and Carver Hawke Live, Character Death Fix, Dragon Age Quest: Here Lies the Abyss, Drunk Alistair, Emotional, Everything is Beautiful and Nothing Hurts, Fix-It, Gen, King Alistair, POV Varric Tethras, Philosophy, Tamlen Lives, Varric Tethras Is So Done, Varric Tethras Writes, Varric Tethras' Nicknames, Warden Alistair, Warden Felix Alexius, Warden Tamlen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-06
Updated: 2018-05-06
Packaged: 2019-05-03 01:57:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,250
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14558352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NorroenDyrd/pseuds/NorroenDyrd
Summary: A brief overview of what-if universes where Nelaros, Tamlen, Ashaad, Ketojan, Felix, and the alternate Hawke twin survive, Feynriel helps the person trapped in the Fade during Here Lies the Abyss escape, and Alistair learns that Fiona is his mother — narrated by Varric, who is tired of writing tragedies, and finds himself fantasizing about happier, more upbeat tales.





	Time for Different Stories

Varric has always liked writing tragedies. Well, not liked, he supposes: he is not actually a sadist.  
  
But it has never failed to deeply resonate within him, that overwhelmed gasp when the author and reader reach the final stage of following the hero through the twisting maze of misadventure, where with every corner turned, the path keeps getting narrower and more slippery.  
  
The gasp of realizing that all the sturdy, safe stairways and bridges the hero has built, to make it easier to escape the maze, are now crumbling down, rapidly, unstoppably, irrevocably.  
  
The gasp that escapes your parted lips when you watch this destructive rockfall drag the hero with it, towards certain doom - and with the exit from the maze so close within reach, too, blinking brightly like window of light, so deceptively welcoming.  
  
The pang in your chest, the staggering oompf of breathlessness - like when you waddle too close to the edge of a cliff amid all that bright blue and green nature stuff, only rather more satisfying. He has always been partial to this sort of thing, sensing it more keenly than whatever it is you are supposed to feel when the main couple mashes together in a backlit smooch against a sunset, and the curtain falls with a promise of them both living till they are ninety and populating half of Thedas with their countless offspring.  
  
Perhaps that’s why he is so unsatisfied with his romance serial (don’t let the Seeker catch wind of him admitting that!). You are obligated to give romances a happy ending; that is part of the package - and he has never seen much appeal in happy endings. Or has he?  
  
Tragedies are still great, still gripping to write and read - but shit… His actual life, beyond the realm of ink and parchment, has been chock-full of those lately. And most terribly, so has been the life of his friends.  
  
Andraste’s tits, he would have coped just fine if it was just himself - he has been honing the skill of crawling out of dung piles  with a sly smirk on his face since he was a teenager. But seeing his friends’ world caving in upon them because of crazed spiky red Templars, or shrieking, tooth-gnashing demons, or a blazing green hole in the sky, or what have you… That is almost too much. That almost makes him stop wishing for stories where the third act ends with the hero face down in the dust.  
  
Just look what Hawke’s story turned into - and the Warden’s story, for that matter, though Varric only heard that from secondhand accounts. The merry, evil-fighting band of misfits, scattered to the wind, and the hero who cemented then all together, nigh on absorbed by obscurity; the disaster that the band averted, snowballing into a much bigger disaster; the clouds that they held at bay with their bold stance and carefree banter, only turning darker, heavier, hanging low and oppressive with now crack of light to be seen.  
  
And who knows how much time fate, or the Maker, or whoever is responsible for writing this weird shit, has allotted to the Inquisitor - Varric’s new friend, whom he very much have liked to hold on to, in the midst of all this flying shit - before their path of adventure, too, takes a steep downward turn and ends in betrayal and pain and loss.  
  
So maybe, just maybe, now is the time for different stories.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where the Fereldan city elves gain a new unexpected defender - a warrior with golden hair and clear, pale eyes that sometimes seem to fill up with an unearthly flame. This flame comes from a spirit that drifted close to the rippling, threadbare Veil, drawn by the horrible wrong wrought in the dimly lit bowels of a noble’s estate, and then entered the warrior’s limp, twitching body as he lay on the stone floor, sliced up by the guardsmen’s swords and slowly, agonizingly losing his life in an oozing, hot red stream. He was not even truly a warrior back then - just a terrified, huge-eyed elven boy who grabbed a weapon to defend the woman whom his elders had appointed as his wife; the woman whom he had never even met before, but still did his best to protect. He died long before his time, foolishly and unfairly - and the world could benefit from a story where he is saved. Judging from what happened to Blondie, becoming merged with a critter from beyond the Veil may not be the best solution in the long run - but Varric has also heard of the Warden’s companion, Wynne, who was sustained by a spirit with much less ‘Grr, vengeful smash!’, so this might still work. A miraculously revived elf becoming a hero for his brethren - for the woman he wanted to keep safe - sure sounds promising.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where Hawke, his good buddy Hawke, uses all their strength and skill to stop the rampaging ogre before its disproportionate, lumpy arms reach their sibling, and thus both Sunshine and Junior survive, making it through the smoking, dying badlands where Lothering used to nestle, so safe and homely once, and across the heaving expanse of what the Rivaini raiders call the 'wine-dark waves’, and through the heavy gates of Kirkwall. They make a fine addition to Varric’s crew, both of them, inseparable as they were during their childhood, bickering on every trek, but ultimately supporting each other and helping each other grow: Sunshine turning Junior softer, Junior turning Sunshine bolder, each making the other’s lot in their sibling’s shadow, and in the whirlwind of shadows that fall when Leandra is taken, far more bearable.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where little Daisy is the one who sees either of the twins falter on the murky, sharply zigzagging path in the Deep Roads, their body suddenly heavy with darkspawn blood, their skin white and clammy as a frog’s underbelly, their lips purple and thirsty for air - and says confidently, a reflected light blossoming in her enormous green eyes,  
  
'Don’t worry; there is a way to help! My clanmates, Mahariel and Tamlen, got the same sickness when we discovered the corrupted Eluvian - but the Grey Wardens helped them! Both of them! Now, Anders, can you please, please sense anyone Warden-ey nearby? Can you?’  
  
And while Blondie, grumbling something about 'the blasted Wardens’ but determined to help, scouts the dwarven passageways for signs of his fellows, Daisy blabs on and on about her fellow Dalish - mostly for the sake of easing the fear and tension among her companions. About how Tamlen, instead of being left for dead, passed the oh so mysterious Joining and journeyed to stop the Blight by Mahariel’s side, as befits a true lethallin. 'Isn’t it just wonderful how they grew up together, and hunted together, and faced the Archdemon together? Isn’t it?’  
  
  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where, in search of the Viscount’s wayward son, Varric’s merry crew arrives promptly enough to keep Ashaad from getting cut down - and when the dust settles, the big painted warrior finds himself face to face with the lost Basra boy he has come to care about, the sea burning pink and gold behind their backs, whispering something soft and subtle and rustling. Something that Varric might find a bit hard to catch, because picking up clues scattered about in… ewww… nature is far from his strong suit - but Rivaini understands, and nods, and leads the others away, murmuring meaningfully,  
  
'Let’s give these two space. Let them sort out what’s in their hearts’.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where Hawke - or hey, Daisy or Blondie or Sunshine; whoever has magic - lashes forth, outstretched hands shimmering sparkling with the blue aura of frost magic, and puts out the fire that the silent, chain-wrapped mountain, Ketojan, has tried to engulf himself in. And then, gently, carefully, pulls out the coarse threading that has locked his mouth shut, and eases the yoke of his constricting metal collar (as far as it is possible, for wearing it all his adult life must surely have weakened his neck), and takes him by his scarred, clawed hand, and leads him off into a world that he will no longer be obligated to see through the slits of a mask. A world where there are plenty, plenty more choices than to live as a Qunari or die. Especially when the Champion of Kirkwall has your back.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where the famed Alistair, veteran of the Fifth Blight and purveyor of silly puns that are tooth-rottingly innocent compared to what Buttercup and Tiny and Hero guffaw about, drops by at Skyhold. Either as a king, swathed in furs and with a brood of sleek-coated hounds prancing at his heel, here to investigate the new force at his border and figure out its intentions; or as a Warden, so blindingly shiny in his gryphon armour, ready to help the cause in any way he can; or as a former exile, puffy-faced and badly shaven and shivering in his oily rags, freshly emerged from the black pit of a decade-long drinking binge and trying to find a role in this world that will not make him weep on the rare occasions when he looks into the mirror. It doesn’t matter, really. What matters is that Skyhold has a library, and in that library, bathed in the soft, dusty light, lingers an elven woman with a worry-worn face and a wonderful, wonderful confession dancing at the tip of her tongue. 'I am your mother, Alistair; and I will make sure that you are never, ever alone again’. A short, simple string of words that will be sure to induce a stifled sob and a shaky embrace, akin to the desperate grasp of a drowning man, from king and Warden and vagabond alike.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where another Warden comes to the Inquisition’s stronghold as well. A young Tevinter, still a bit dazed after the hush-hush ritual that culled the bubbling, scorching Taint in his blood, and not really certain what being a Warden entails for him (especially since his only comrade in Skyhold is kind of clueless himself, having supposedly been on his own for far, far too long) - but brimming over with a puppy-like eagerness to join those who stand against the worst of the worst that his country has to offer. And to come visit his best friend Sparkler the first chance he gets, both laughing with a most undignified (most un-Sparkler-ey) giddiness, struggling to breathe, much less to speak coherently, and patting each other on the shoulder with an awkwardness that shows that neither of them has ready been taught how to hug properly. And then, with a deep, steadying intake of air to keep himself from dissolving into a weeping lump of jelly, to descend into Skyhold’s dungeons, where a lonesome prisoner is huddled up in his cell, punished for crimes that he has committed and would have committed, and not really caring about anything any longer - and to call our to him, through a tremulous smile, and to assure him, as he grows petrified and sheet-white, that no, he is not a ghost, this is not a new type of torture devised by the Inquisitor. He is here, actually here, in the flesh, not completely cured but guaranteed to stay alive for thirty more years - which he will make use of as best he can. He swears.  
  
Maybe now is the time for stories where whoever is left in the Fade, as the abyss of nightmares yawns in the heart of the Adamant Fortress, is guaranteed to return to the waking world, shooting out of the splashing green light like a diver out of the (brrr, water!) frothing sea. Because one of the Vints that tried to enslave the Wardens chanced to come south with an apprentice - the very, very familiar young man with long hair worn in a braid, and sharp features that, if you look closely enough, betray that he is half-elven. Tired of being dragged around and poked at like a frog about to be dissected; tired of having his unique ability to unwind and reweave the threads of the Veil used as a weapon by the Venatori, he stands up to his masters the moment he learns that Hawke is here - the good old Hawke, who helped him all those years ago, during the demon debacle that, uh, made some members of the gang, Varric included, show themselves… not in the very best light. And Hawke is not here alone, either, but a whole army, a whole throng of world-saving heroes that can give him shelter. It’s the least he can do - warping that gargling, gargantuan spider our of existence, and raising the floating black rocks that fill the sickly green air of the Fade, and laying them down, with a lot if mystical finger-waggling, into a solid highway out of the abyss. The least he can do, really.  
  
  
  
Maybe now if the time for stories where all ends well; where those thought long-lost return to their loved ones; where the window at the finish of the maze hides no deception. Because there is power in stories - and Varric is so damn tired of this power turning into a dark premonition of what is to happen in the real world.


End file.
